I was rather excited to participate in the 2006 triennial DMCA exemption hearings, especially after writing Catch 1201 (along with OHG), a systematic study of the last two rounds. Here’s my reply comment (pdf).

If you go down the list of reply commenters, it’s impressive how the field of communication studies came together to support Decherney (pdf), Sender, and Delli Carpini on this one. In addition to a reply comment (pdf) by Decherney et al. and my submission, reply commenters include:

Michael Haley, the executive director of the International Communication Association, submitting Reply Comment #26 (pdf).

Stephen Prince (an ASC alum and protege of Paul Messaris), submitting Reply Comment #28 (pdf) on behalf of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

A long list of comm scholars, capped off by Kembrew McLeod, with Reply Comment #16.

If it gets any traction, the “Penn exemption” will be a landmark. I, for one, will be there live this spring. Here’s hoping Marybeth Peters plays ball.

A Cincinatti video surveillance company, CityWatcher.com, has begun implanting employees with RFID chips. They’re injecting these VeriChips into certain employees’ triceps to serve as ID tags.

See the story here at WorldNetDaily, which is staffed by people whosse views are quite divergent from my own. Nonetheless, I sincerely hope that Americans’ religiosity can be called upon to prevent the widespread adoption of RFID implants. After all, how could we get much closer to the mark of the beast?

For a more mainstream account that verifies the CityWatcher story, see The Register.

Props to fellow ASC student Susan Haas for tipping me off to this one.

I don’t generally use this blog up to post personal stuff, but this is worth sharing: I am now engaged to Tina Collins. I just finished comprehensive exams a couple weeks ago, which I used as an excuse to get out of town (Ocean Grove, NJ, to be exact) and surprise her with a marriage proposal. I’ve been in love with her for nearly a year now, and we’re very excited about the wedding.

I promise NOT to rehash the blow-by-blow details of wedding preparation here, but I will at least post once more to note that we have gotten married. (In the mean time, we still have to pick a venue and date…)

Read this interview.

While I don’t agree entirely with his views, Stallman is somebody who believes in freedom more deeply than anyone I can name.

I’ve just received the PDF for my article, “Scratching Out Authorship: Representations of the Electronic Music DJ at the Turn of the 21st Century,” from the editor (Rick Maffei) at LEA. The article is in the next issue of Popular Communication.

Here’s the link (also above) where I’ve posted it on SSRN. Feedback is always welcome.

Good news? LEA’s publication agreement (pdf) allows me to post this publicly, forever. Bad? I had to PAY $18 for the pdf and will only get one hard copy gratis.

Update, May 24, 2006:

A very polite, concerned woman from LEA called me today. She had two concerns about this blog post. (Nice to know somebody’s reading our blog, I guess, but the delay suggests an indirect discovery.)

First, she objects that I didn’t provide a complete citation to the article, including volume and number. Frankly, that’s at the SSRN page, so if anybody wants to read the article, that information will be obvious once they follow the link. In any case, it’s in Volume 4, Number 1, pp. 21-38. (In that same issue, you will find two very thoughtful pieces by Barbie Zelizer and Naomi Rockler. By sheer coincidence, Zelizer teaches at Annenberg-U Penn, where I am now finishing my Ph.D., and Rockler teaches in the Department of Speech Communication at Colorado State, where I got my M.A.)

Second, she expressed concern that I complained about a) buying back the PDF to the article that I wrote, and b) only getting one free hard copy. She was somewhat reassured when I explained that these objections are less strenous than my support for their publication agreement allowing reproduction. (I think everything scholarly should be on the public internet.)

Allow me to clarify my stance on LEA: their publication agreement is relatively author-friendly (albeit inideal; see below). Their granting of only one free copy is regrettable but understandable. I’d like one each for Mom and Grandma, too, but I understand that these things cost money. Paying for a PDF of my article (which costs them next to nothing in labor and nothing in materials) is more objectionable, but if I have to pay for a PDF that I can freely distribute, I’d rather buy that than receive a legally (or even worse, technically) limited article without payment.

Don’t get me wrong: the folks who worked on the article did great work. Sharon R. Mazzarella (Clemson U) and Norma Pecora (Ohio U) are great editors to work with. Rick Maffei (production editor) and his team did a great job. I will continue to submit to LEA journals for much of my work because of the “good news” mentioned above. I actually do like their publication agreement, even if I don’t love it. It’s great that I can post my article online, something Routledge (which has the lion’s share of comm journals related to cultural studies) wouldn’t dream of allowing. I have yet to send any of my first-authored articles to Routledge, and unless I intend it to be read exclusively by other comm scholars, I may never, pending tenure requirements. LEA’s publication, in contrast, is actually pretty author-friendly.

While I like LEA’s publication agreement, I LOVE the agreements I have signed with the two law reviews that have accepted my work. For starters, I keep the copyright. Addiitonally, law reviews are generally happy to deliver electronic versions to authors. In their authors’ agreement, the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal explicitly promises “to deliver to Authors an electronic copy of the final version of the Work, concurrently with the initial print publication of the Work.” The Federal Communications Law Journal even posts its articles on their website, albeit inconsistently. This is related to the fact that these are student-run and not-for-profit, and that LEA and Routledge are for-profit publishers featuring professional editors and professorial editorial boards.

It’s just unfortunate that, in communication and in most scholarly disciplines, a) a student-run journal is inconceivable, and b) for-profit publishers generally run the game. Within that category, LEA is staffed by pretty reasonable people. But I’d like to push for a cornocopia of publishing models. In at least one case, First Monday, online-only seems to work out pretty well.